


An Unjust Holiday Hellscape

by viridianmasquerade



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Flushed Feelings, Gen, Gift Giving, Mood Swings, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Twelfth Perigee's Eve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 01:41:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3100346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viridianmasquerade/pseuds/viridianmasquerade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Terezi must help her moirail, Sollux, pick a gift for Aradia for 12th Perigee's Eve, but dealing with Sollux's tremendous mood swings makes that seemingly-simple task into a holiday hellscape for two.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Unjust Holiday Hellscape

**Author's Note:**

  * For [awespic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/awespic/gifts).



"These are all terrible," Sollux moaned, dropping his face into his hands. "Terrible," he mumbled through sweating palms. "Every last one of them. Aradia is going to hate them. And then she's going to hate me. I'm doomed." He slid out of his chair onto the respiteblock floor and slumped there, glasses ever so slightly askew, looking for all the world like the kind of dumb stupid idiot who'd been mood swinging back and forth about which of twenty-two potential 12th Perigee's Eve presents to give or not to give to a girl who wasn't even his matesprit yet for four incredibly mind-numbing hours.

Which was exactly the kind of dumb stupid idiot that her moirail was, in case anyone thought that was an exaggeration of some kind. Terezi would have given all the red chalk on Alternia, past present and future, for it to be an exaggeration of  **any**  kind. She rubbed her temples despondently, half-hoping that a meteor would helpfully fall on his hive and crush all of the presents and possibly also Sollux himself, right now please if there was any natural justice in the world. 

When the meteor didn't come (presumably because the world was an unjust holiday hellscape of 12th Perigee's Eve presents, bent on trapping her here for all time) she reached over and fixed his stupid glasses, still massaging her head with the other hand. The time had come for a change of tactics. 

Four hours ago, all twenty-two of the gifts stacked in front of them on the nutrition plateau had been the best gifts Sollux had ever thought of and he had wanted to give Aradia all of them at the same time as a surprise and he had wanted to do so immediately. It had taken Terezi the better part of an hour to talk him down from the ledge of that abominably over-the-top gesture. Then she'd attempted to convince him (diplomatically, of course) to discard at least some of the less likely presents. Terezi didn't care how long it had taken to write, a custom ~ATH virus was not an appropriate seasonal gift for anyone you wanted to fill the flushed quadrant with.

Unfortunately, her efforts had backfired: he'd decided that  **all** of the presents were worthless and he couldn't give Aradia any of them. Terezi had been forced to backpedal frantically in order to convince him he was even worthy of giving Aradia one present, with a small but growing suspicion that there was something more going on behind all of his panic. 

He'd spent the next two hours cycling between feverish glee and morbid anguish, at one point declaring he would code a program that would feed each unworthy present one by one to his colony of bees in order to truly showcase the depths of his failure. Terezi had pulled out every trick in the Moirail Manual of Style, doing her very best to be encouraging and supportive without being overbearing (they already had one Kanaya, after all, no need for a second). At last, after nearly four hours of the most grueling shoosh-papping she thought any moirail had ever done, her hard work had paid off. She had managed, at long last, to convince him that he was capable of selecting a single present, and that the only hurdle that yet remained was to actually choose the present. They were on the cusp of a magnificent breakthrough! She could virtually see the faint possibility of this night being over before the sun actually rose!

And then, as Sollux had reached out towards the towering pile of gifts, hand trembling with the agonizing effort of  **maybe**  possibly making a choice to narrow down the selections, he'd stopped. "These are all terrible," he had moaned, and Terezi had felt everything she'd been building towards for the past four hours come crashing down. When the meteor she'd hoped would end it all hadn't come, she knew it was finally time to unleash the nuclear option.

Terezi sat up suddenly, drumming her fingers on the arms of her chair. "You know what, Sollux," she said, sweet as sugared grubsauce, "you're right."

"Huh?"

Behind his glasses, she could see confusion brewing in his eyes. Good! Confusion and fear were a legislacerator's best weapons. She should have been using them all along, and never mind the Moirail Manual of Style. 

"You really are doomed. They  **are** all terrible," she declared, firmly but with a careful hint of sadness. "Every single one of them."

"I - what? All of them?"

"All of them," she said, with a solemn nod. "I'm sorry, Sollux. I was just trying to help, but I see now that I should never have lied to you about it."

"What the fuck, TZ!" he said incredulously, anger blooming wonderfully beneath the confusion. Good, good. Anger was good! It meant interest! It meant action! It meant no more flopping on the floor like a soggy nutrition twig boiling in a pot of self-inflicted despair!

Sollux jumped to his feet, and Terezi had to bite her lip to contain a grin. She stood up and put a consoling hand on his shoulder, patting as gently and as condescendingly as possible. She was hoping to get him so riled that he'd spill the beans about whatever the real problem was, whether he wanted to or not. "There's only one solution, really. But it will fix your problems, I promise."

Sollux scowled at his moirail. It was clear that he smelled a trap, which was no surprise. Everything Terezi did when she got like this was a trap: it was a legislacerator's nature. She knew that he knew that it was a trap, and he knew that she knew that he knew. Unfortunately, only one of them knew what the trap was, and without that, a victim is hardly forewarned **or** forearmed.  

"What solution?" he asked warily, walking directly into her claws even still. The temptation of an easy fix was evidently too much for him to resist, as she had known it would be. Or maybe he just wanted to walk into her setup on his own two feet, instead of being dragged kicking and screaming. Either was fine, as long as it got this ridiculous night over with.

"We chuck 'em all," she exclaimed, grabbing the box with the ~ATH virus and flinging it gleefully out the window. "Every last one!" Sollux flinched as the package bounced off of one of the hive's outcroppings on its way down, but was too stunned to stop her.

One down, and Terezi was moving fast. The next victim was a jar of limited edition 12th Perigee's Eve-flavored grubsauce (Terezi wasn't sure that anyone who had to live through the holiday would want to taste its concentrated essence), which made an excellent crashing sound when it landed. It was swiftly followed by a burgundy fanny pack (for holding things when she went treasure hunting), a copy of The Dipshit's Guide to How To Tame Your Stupid Lusus For Dummies (Karkat's recommendation and therefore awful by default), and a hair curler with optional floof attachment (she was sincerely curious about that, but it was too late to stop herself and out it went). Both Terezi and Sollux stared balefully down from the window as it landed on the rocks below with a thunk.

Terezi allowed them both a moment of silence before snapping back into action, grabbing and flinging the poorly-wrapped boxes with wild abandon. She wondered why someone would wrap gifts so poorly for someone they felt so strongly about, and filed the observation in her mental evidence locker to present to the jury later. And come to think of it, why were all the gifts such stupid crap?

"Stop! For fuck's sake, Terezi, stop!" Sollux yelled, fruitlessly trying to get between Terezi and the presents. There were simply too many, scattered too widely - if he dashed left, she darted right and started tossing from that side instead. Out went the horn cozies, the shirt with her symbol on it, the comfy white socks. A few other pointless things followed, flung out and away over Sollux's shouted protests. Who could be expected to remember the contents of so many nearly-identical boxes? Not Terezi. She was flying! If she kept moving, maybe Sollux wouldn't think to just close the damn window. She'd been lucky so far, but she still hadn't found whatever it was she was looking for. Maybe she'd been wrong and she was wrecking all this junk for nothing.

Then she saw the tube, buried beneath the few remaining boxes. She pulled her cane out from her sylladex, anticipating resistance. Legislacerator's instinct told her that this was a very important piece of evidence, maybe even Exhibit A. There was always an Exhibit A when it came to crimes of passion, and there was no way that trying to give someone you were flushed for twenty-two terrible presents could interpreted as anything **but**  a crime.

"Ooh, what's in the tube, Sollux?" she said, yanking it free. Wielding her cane one-handed, she held Sollux at bay as she inspected the tube, tilting it up and down. "This is different," she trilled, watching Sollux freeze stock-still. The tube was  **very** different, compared to the other presents, and not just because it wasn't a boring rectangular box. It was wrapped pristinely, without crease or crinkle. The paper was nicer than the other presents, with proper ribbon and even a bow. But even if it hadn't been wrapped so well, the look on Sollux's face would have told her everything she needed to know.

This was the present he'd been wanting to give Aradia all along. This was the reason for the mood swings, the panic, for the obfuscating pile of stupendous crap on the table. For some reason, he was worried about giving her whatever was in this interesting tube. 

"Put that down," he mumbled, and reached for it, carefully. 

She whapped his wrist gently with her cane. "Does that mean it's important? What is even in here?" she asked, putting the gift to her ear and shaking it up and down with exaggerated curiosity. She made an inquisitive noise.

"They were all equally important," he said, with an absence of conviction that betrayed the lie.

"Oh, then this one can go equally out with the others," she said casually, and turned towards the window.

With a whumpf, she was on the floor with Sollux on top of her, cane skittering away, the tube torn from her grip with the telekinesis Sollux had finally remembered he had.

"Not that one!" he yelled, pinning her so she couldn't reach for her cane. "You leave that one alone! How could you even - " He stopped short when she started laughing breathlessly.

He made a face. "You knew all along." He stood up and reached out to help Terezi up.

She took it and got to her feet, brushing herself off. "Yeah, durr." Well, she hadn't quite known all along. She'd made an educated guess that there was something more going on than a mere indecision about which present to give, but she wasn't going to tell him that and ruin her mystique.

"You weren't going to - "

"Sollux, come on, I'm your moirail. I wouldn't." She tilted her head and smiled crookedly at him. "I just needed to make sure that this was  **the** present. And I was totally right as always because I know everything, and it is."

Sollux sighed and scratched nervously at the base of his horns. "Yeah," he muttered. "It is."

"So if you have a present that you know is the best present, why get a pile of other junk and get yourself all freaked out about it, you total nerdlord? Why would you ask Karkat for suggestions? Why a floof attachment? And what is in there, anyway?" She nodded at the mysterious tube.

He slumped down into his chair, dropping the tube on the table. "It's just, it's kind of," he trailed off, heaving another massive sigh. Terezi plunked down into her own chair, adopting a listening pose. "It's so obviously red. The present." Terezi asked him what it was again, to no avail. "What if she hates it?" he asked, over the background noise of Terezi asking what it was over and over again. "What if I'm totally crazy and misreading her signals and she doesn't feel that way about me?"

"Sollux!" Terezi shouted, grabbing his knees and staring maniacally into his eyes, "I have spent four - no, almost five hours now - shoosh-papping you into a correct state of mind so you can give this incredible present to Aradia and then win her undying flushed devotion because she is so obviously into you in a very red way and I'm not sure how you could miss it except that you are critically, terminally uncool, so in the name of all that is good and just on this holiday hellscape of a planet you are going to tell me what it fucking is before I drub you senseless with my cane."

"It's a map," Sollux blurted. "Or, well, it's two maps." Terezi rolled her eyes. Always with the duality gimmick. "One brand-new map, with all the places we've gone treasure hunting together marked on it. And - " he hesitated.

"Sollux?" she said expectantly.

"And one very, very old map."

"Of?"

"I'm not actually sure," he said, "I went to the place to check it out, but there's nothing there.The map is covered in frogs, the whole border is frogs, and whatever it's supposed to be leading to is just marked with one giant frog head. The weird thing is, it's in the middle of a desert, and you don't get many frogs in a desert. It was kind of weird."

"So, you're giving her a dud treasure map?" she asked dubiously.

"Well, it's a puzzle. You know how she likes puzzles and exploring and finding things out. I thought maybe she might be able to dig up something I missed. I thought maybe we could go together. Like," and he chewed his lip speculatively, "like a date."

Terezi hugged him hard, hard enough to squeeze him a little breathless. A reasonable payback for him tackling her earlier, she thought affectionately. Not that she hadn't deserved it. "I get it. It's perfect. She'll love it." She let him go and sank back into her chair, grinning.

"You think?"

She fixed him with a look. "Am I ever wrong?" And she laughed when he agreed that no, she was never, ever wrong.


End file.
